Getting a mortgage that you can afford is a major life decision, and it's understandable if you find comfort in the big high street bank - but it may cost you more in the long run.

But new research suggests borrowers may be making an expensive mistake by focusing on offers from the biggest names which have the lowest rates.

Online mortgage broker Trussle conducted a study, which looked at the rates on offer from the big six banks in the UK - Lloyds, Nationwide , Santander , HSBC , Royal Bank of Scotland and Barclays - comparing them based on the total cost, including all fees and charges, rather than simply just the interest rate.

It based its true cost calculations on buying a property at the UK average house price of £226,906, with a mortgage worth 60% of that value, £136,144, The Mirror reports.

And in almost EVERY instance Trussle found that the lowest rate didn’t deliver the best overall package to borrowers.

Borrowers lured into making the wrong decision

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For example, with Nationwide the lowest two-year fixed rate is 1.54%. Over the two-year period, with all fees and incentives included, that would cost the typical borrower £14,213.

However, they could go for a higher interest rate of 1.94%, but which comes with lower fees, saving them £874 in the process.

It’s the same at Santander, where the lowest rate of 1.44%, which coupled with the various fees, would mean an outlay of £14,485 over two years. But a higher rate of 1.89% would deliver a saving of £811 as a result of the much lower fees involved.

Ishaan Malhi, chief executive officer and founder of Trussle, said that too often borrowers are “lured into making a decision based on headline rate alone and end up paying hundreds of pounds more in unexpected charges than they would on other available deals”.

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Money saving tips

The fee that catches borrowers out

While the monthly repayment is the main thing many of us think about when sorting out a mortgage, as Trussle has found, it’s certainly not the only cost to bear in mind.

The big additional cost is the product fee, which is also described as the arrangement fee. This is essentially a fee that you pay in order to secure that product that you’ve picked out, and the size of this fee can vary significantly.

Some deals don’t come with a fee at all, while others can run into the thousands.

The way that you opt to pay this fee is a big consideration too - you can pay it all up front, or add it to the mortgage balance. The trouble with this latter option is that you’ll then pay interest on it, meaning it will cost you vastly more in the long-run.

Clearly, the size of any product fee needs to be included in any price comparison or else you risk signing up for a ‘cheaper’ rate that will actually cost you significantly more.

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Why you could be better off with a lender you’ve never heard of

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The big six lenders that Trussle looked at in its study are undoubtedly the big beasts when it comes to mortgages in the UK, accounting for around two-thirds of the market.

They are household names, but that doesn’t mean they are going to offer you the best deal.

Indeed, you may be best off going for a deal from a lender you’ve never heard of, or at least a firm that you may not have realised is even active in the mortgage market.

For example, using the mortgage calculator on MoneyfactsI found that both Sainsbury’s Bank and Post Office Money work out even cheaper on a true cost basis than the Nationwide two-year deal above, coming to £13,505 and £13,693 over two years respectively.

This is even more pronounced when borrowing at a higher loan-to-value.

For example if you want to take out a mortgage at 85%, then according to Moneyfacts the cheapest deals on a true cost basis come from the likes of Clydesdale Bank, AA, Tesco Bank, Sainsbury’s Bankand M&S Bank, albeit with some competition from HSBC and Nationwide.

Let's be honest, when the time comes to sort out a mortgage, the AA and Tesco aren't exactly going to be the first places many of us think to go, yet they currently offer some of the top deals around.

The important lesson to take from this is that restricting your mortgage search simply to lenders you are familiar with on the high street is a bad idea - it’s only by searching the entire market that you will stand a chance of finding the best deal.

You can do this yourself, or make use of a mortgage broker.

The big plus point of a broker is that you will benefit from some lenders and deals which aren’t available to direct borrowers, though there may be a fee to pay in return for their advice.